Hi all, as the title really. I have a pair of lowther fidelio's with EX3 drivers and am currently using a 25w valve hybrid amp, problem is I can only just turn the volume control off zero or its far too loud for my current listening room. I am toying with the idea of building a decware SE84 kit.

anything to help with an issue with the other way round? i have a pair of fostex 127e drivers rated 90db. i just finished building the amp and am working around a few issues but the volume pot needs to be turned about 85% of the way to get any reasonable volume. amp not powerful enough to drive the drivers?

Our journey that ended up with RH84 varient monobloks, started with a pair of Zen amps. The Zen are quite good, if you are ready to tackle something a bit more from scratch you can do better (and for less money -- for the same money probably way better because you'll be able to afford better iron).

anything to help with an issue with the other way round? i have a pair of fostex 127e drivers rated 90db. i just finished building the amp and am working around a few issues but the volume pot needs to be turned about 85% of the way to get any reasonable volume. amp not powerful enough to drive the drivers?

You haven't mentioned what you are using to drive the Zen amplifier, perhaps its output is too low to drive the Zen to full output.

The other possibility (as you mentioned above) particularly in a large room and if you like it loud is that the amplifier is not quite powerful enough to do the job.

anything to help with an issue with the other way round? i have a pair of fostex 127e drivers rated 90db. i just finished building the amp and am working around a few issues but the volume pot needs to be turned about 85% of the way to get any reasonable volume. amp not powerful enough to drive the drivers?

Paul needs less gain, you need more gain. For this you'll need to add another gain stage somewhere, something like one of the 12B4 line stages, or maybe Gregg-the-Geek's new MooseFET (he just gifted me one for an early Christmas, i'll be starting a thread on it shortly -- i'm sure there is already some info at the GeekZone)

Our journey that ended up with RH84 varient monobloks, started with a pair of Zen amps. The Zen are quite good, if you are ready to tackle something a bit more from scratch you can do better (and for less money -- for the same money probably way better because you'll be able to afford better iron).

dave

any suggestions for something beyond the zen? would a preamp + zen be better or should i just perhaps look at a new amp?

anything to help with an issue with the other way round? i have a pair of fostex 127e drivers rated 90db. i just finished building the amp and am working around a few issues but the volume pot needs to be turned about 85% of the way to get any reasonable volume. amp not powerful enough to drive the drivers?

Apply Joppa's Rule to the problem. The rule tells us, in an "average" sized listening space, that an amp/speaker combo should be capable of 102 dB. SPL peaks at a 1 M. distance. Applying the rule to your 90 dB. sensitive drivers suggests an amp of at least 30 WPC.

IF you are going to use a DECWARE SE84, you need high efficiency speakers. New speakers or a different amp are the choices available to resolve the situation.